Trump campaign doubles its spending in just one month

Donald Trump's campaign expenses more than doubled last month, even as the Republican presidential nominee held his payroll to about 70 employees, aired zero television advertisements and undertook no significant operations across the country.

Trump has relied heavily on the Republican National Committee for conventional campaign infrastructure. Picture: Getty

Instead, about half of the campaign’s $18.5 million in spending was vacuumed up by Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm new to national politics, Federal Election Commission filings show. It’s a crossover vendor from Trump’s real estate organisation.

The campaign paid Giles-Parscale $8.4 million in July, about twice what the San Antonio firm had collected from it over the course of the preceding year. Brad Parscale, the president, is the campaign’s director of digital marketing. The big expense came as Trump put a new emphasis on online fundraising, after paying for his primary run mostly out of his own pocket.

Millions more went to air travel. The campaign paid about $2m for private jets other than Trump’s own TAG Air, which also collected $500,000.

Some of Trump’s consultants are also mysteriously well-paid.

Chess Bedsole, the campaign’s Alabama state director, was paid $64,000 last month for field consulting. His last campaign payment was for $15,000 in December.

Yet the campaign’s payroll remained thin, and there did not appear to be much new in the way of office leases across the country, including in critical battleground states such as Ohio.

Trump has relied heavily on the Republican National Committee for conventional campaign infrastructure. And he’s boasted of holding the line on his campaign spending. But he’s running critically low on time to build an operation that can compete with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

In addition to being ahead of Trump in polls in key states, Clinton has maintained a staff of about 700 for months, opened up offices across the country and already spent $67m on general election ads. Trump put out his first ads days ago, spending $5m to air them in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Her campaign spent $38m in July, about double his spending.

Clinton can afford to spend more than Trump, the July campaign finance reports show. Her campaign raised $52m while his brought in $37m for the month, including a $2m contribution from Trump himself.